I feel like I am

Falling

And the ground is treacherous underfoot

I feel like I am drowning

And I don’t know how to swim through the tears

I feel like I am

Lost.

I gave the keys to Mum’s house to the lawyers today.

It will always be Mum’s house.

Plastic Beach

from Midway

In the Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who was cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

A beach cleanup on Midway Atoll made us feel just like Sisyphus.

There are millions of tons of plastics present in our oceans, and these are constantly fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces which are scattered throughout the water column and present, in different densities, throughout all the worlds oceans.

Contrary to what many people believe, there are no visible islands of trash anywhere –even if some areas, the gyres, accumulate higher densities of plastic pollution. In actuality, what is happening is much more complex and scary: our oceans are becoming a planetary soup laced with plastic.

To make thing worse, these tiny pieces of plastic are extremely powerful chemical accumulators for organic persistent pollutants present in ambient sea water such as DDE’s and PCB’s. The whole food chain, invertebrates, fish, sea turtles… are eating plastic and /or other animals who have plastic in them. This means that we are. Like the albatrosses on Midway, we carry the garbage patch inside of us.

Cleaning up this mess is not feasible, technically or economically. Even if all the boats in the world were put to the task somehow, the cleanup would not only remove the plastics but also the plankton, which is the base of the food chain, and is responsible for capturing half of the CO2 of our atmosphere and generating half of the oxygen we need to breathe.

But even if this problem was solved too somehow, the amount of plastic that we could capture, at an immense cost, would be a drop in the bucket as compared to the amount that flows into the ocean every day.

No matter how hard we push, in terms of technology or money, the boulder will be rolling back down the hill, throughout eternity, unless we stop putting more plastics into our environment.

The good news is that we can do this. We can do this now. We need to start a social movement that spreads virally and creates a critical mass of concerned citizens who pledge to move away from our disposable habits, and who raise their voice to reject and reverse a throwaway culture that might be profitable, but whose consequences are intolerable.

Video by Jan Vozenilek
Written and narrated by: Manuel Maqueda
Music by Christen Lien www.itsnotaviolin.com

Click here to see a satellite image of the exact location of this video (click on ‘view map’ and zoom all the way in.)

I have received permission to reproduce this article, here on my blog with the following conditions.

You my dear readers may do the same. Please lets see if we can get this message out to as many people as we possibly can. I know that I can’t stop the polar ice caps from melting but I can drastically reduce the amount of plastic that I and my family use.

May all your mirrors be magic and all your dreams come true.

In our family one of the must have foods at any celebration is a cheesecake. The recipe is Mum’s and over the years I have made this lemon cheesecake my signature dessert.

I normally use a packet of biscuits as the base but now that Amy has Coeliacs I needed to make a gluten free base. So I simply adapted a basic biscuit recipe and made a baked crust instead.I was thrilled with the results.

I didn’t really follow a recipe for this biscuit mix I just flew by the seat of my pants and unlike the hommous disaster this worked out really well.

Cream 4 tablespoons of butter with a 1/2 a cup of sugar, add a few drops of vanilla essence and then beat in an egg. Then slowly add a 1 and a 1/2 cups of flour to the mix.(I mixed together equal parts gluten free plain flour with almond meal) keep on slowly beating in the flour until it is well mixed. This makes a soft dough.

I spread the mix, which was quite sticky onto the base and up the sides a bit  of my spring form cake pan. I then baked it in a hot oven until it went not quite golden brown. I had a bit left over so I put dessertspoon sized blobs onto a baking tray squished a hole in the centre with my thumb, plonked some jam into the hole and baked them for about 12 minutes or until they were golden brown. These were really yummy little jam drops and I am pleased that I have found an easy, gluten free biscuit recipe to cook with Amy when she comes to visit.

Now back to the cheesecake. Here are the ingredients.

1 block of philadelphia cream cheese (250 g), 1 cup of sugar. 1 can of carnation milk, 1 packet of lemon jelly, 1 tsp of gelatine powder. 1 fresh lemon.

Put the carnation milk in the fridge the night before as it needs to be really cold.

Before you start put a large mixing bowl in the freezer to chill down.

Add one teaspoon of gelatine powder to a packet of lemon jelly crystals, stir well. Then add one cup of boiling water to the jelly, mix well and put it aside to cool down.

Soften the cream cheese in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add one cup of sugar to the cream cheese and beat to a smooth consistency. I also add the zest from one lemon to make it a bit zingy.

Now quickly put the cold carnation milk into the chilled bowl and beat until peaks will almost stand up by themselves.

Add the philly cheese mix and beat on slow

Add the jelly mix and beat on slow for a minute. Then finish mixing by hand.

Pour it into the cake pan and pop into the fridge to set overnight.

If you like a really lemony cheesecake you can add the juice of a lemon to the cup of boiling water before you make the jelly.

There you go. Enjoy. Any questions just ask me in the comments and I will answer them.

*Make sure the baked biscuit base is cool to the touch before you put the cheesecake mix into the pan.

I don’t read that many American blogs but the ones that I do read I love to bits. My most recent discovery is Kristin, who is an entertaining writer, obsessed with her flag widget and occasionally gives her children sugar donuts for breakfast. What is not to love?

My all time favourite American blogger though is Jenny the bloggess. I lurk over at the bloggess giggling my head off at her writing. I very rarely comment because she receives hundreds of comments and by the time I get there, there is nothing left to say.

This post made me giggle my head off and this post  made me leap out of lurkerdom and request a James Garfield card too.

This arrived in the mail the other day.

Look at the smiley face of James Garfield there, what an impressive boar he must of been.

So once I had stopped skipping around the house giggling like a loon and clutching my James Garfield card to my chest. I decided that James Garfield needed a knighthood.

I dug out a spare sword I had kept, just in case I needed to bestow a knighthood on anyone and I dubbed thee Sir James Garfield, Lord of the Stye.

Just in case you are wondering. I am definitely qualified to bestow this honour on James Garfield because I am good friends with a queen and he said go for it,be my proxy. So Jenny if you are reading this the paperwork is in the mail.

On a whim I decided to go and show my little piggies the recently knighted Sir James Garfield, Lord of the Stye.

From their reaction you would have thought that a rockstar had come to visit. There was much piggy squealing and snorting and in amongst the grunts of delight I gathered that Sir James would have been well pleased with his knighthood had he been around to actually enjoy it.

I am a regular reader of the Tasmanian Times. Sometimes the reading is difficult. I have lifted this with permission straight from the Tasmanian times.

Mungo MacCallum Quarterly Essay, Australian Story, Kevin Rudd and the Lucky Country

Clancy from the other side.

He was poisoning the water when he chanced upon a slaughter
So he joined in patriotically to massacre and rape
And he sees the vision splendid of the native problem ended
And a land made safe for cattle from Tasmania to the Cape

In my genocidal fancy visions come to me of Clancy
With a gin across his saddle and her children in pursuit;
As he leaves behind their crying he tots up the dead and dying
And he calculates his bounty and gets ready for a root.

With commendable persistence Clancy follows the resistance
And you’ll find him the rearguard with the priests and their Te
Deums.
While the troopers do the shooting Clancy rides behind them,
looting;
There’s tjuringas for collectors and some heads for the museums.

And when he meets a Jack, Clancy sometimes offers baccy,
And many other presents to improve the shining hour.
While his cobbers call him silly, he smiles and boils his billy
For there’s measles in the blanket rolls and strychnine in the flour.

And a firm but friendly parson thinks he’ll try a little arson
To exorcise the dreaming with his candle, book and bell;
His redeemer loudly praising, he sets all the gunyahs blazing
To civilise the heathen with a touch of Christian hell.

As he contemplates the scene he can remember Truganini
And Pemulwuy and Banelon and others of their kind
And on gentle summer breezes he can sense the new diseases
That will carry their descendants out of sight and out of mind.

And the sturdy stockhorse whinnies as he tramples piccaninnies
And the rider cracks his stockwhip at the ones who run away
And above the odd death rattle he can hear the lowing cattle
As the drover brings them into camp to end a perfect day.

*************************************

“Rudd would also acknowledge that there was another side to Clancy which Paterson does not mention. In spite of the poets assertion that no blood was shed in the pioneering days, actually quite a lot was; it’s just that very little of it was white man’s blood. For Paterson, Indigenous Australians were barely perceptible; if seen at all, they were lovable clowns, figures of fun, not part of the real narrative.”

Mungo MacCallum writing in the latest Quarterly Essay: HERE.

Images of Tasmania is an artist run exhibition held annually in the Long Gallery. The participating artists have connections to the Tasmanian School of Art, some dating back to the 1950’s, whilst others are recent graduates and post-graduates.

Images of Tasmania is a celebration of the creativity and collaborative spirit of the Tasmanian arts community. The inclusion of 42 artists ensures a diverse range of art practices on exhibition, including painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed media, ceramics, glass, photography, jewellery and furniture design.

The ongoing development and refinement of “Images” has resulted in a strong and inspiring exhibition.

The 12^th Images of Tasmania opens at 8 am on Saturday 19 December and runs until Thursday 31 December. Entry is free and opening hours are 10am – 6pm daily Long Gallery and Sidespace Gallery. We invite you to come along and enjoy this exciting and thought provoking exhibition.

What a crock of shit! The nanny state is about to strike again. All internet in Australia  will be filtered at the ISP level so that little Johnny doesn’t stumble across some porn or get pounced on by some internet predator.

AAArggghhh! This makes me so angry.

This parent is standing up and loudly telling the government to just bloody well hang on a minute, I am more than capable of protecting my children from the perils of the internet.

I worry more about my teenage son accidentally clicking onto a sparkly link  that will infect my computer with a virus than I do about him accessing porn on the net.

Why? I hear you ask is that?

Because I talk to and with my children. Internet safety has been drummed into his head. The computer is in a high traffic area of the house and he has to ask my permission to use my computer.

And…

He sees more porn in the school yard than he could ever possibly access here on my computer. Some of the images our kids have on their mobile phones are very very explicit. They aren’t texting they are sexting.

But the clean feed isn’t about pornography and pedophiles that is just the catch cry to distract us from the deeper insidious implications of this horrid legislation.

This legislation is all about control of information. Politicians and their media magnate buddies are scared shitless of twitter and other social media because a: they dont know how to use it properly and b: it keeps them accountable.

I only found out about the trafigura toxic waste scandal via twitter

Cut off our access to information and you effectively cut off our voices. Australians are an apathetic bunch anyway and I think that is one of the reasons that we are being used as a test case. As well as the fact that we are a smallish island population, not too many telecommunications companies to contend with etc etc.

So lets gag Australia and see what happens. If the politicians get away with it here my friends YOU will be next.

So what can you do? You can use your voice. Loudly. We can nag the hell out of our local and federal members and loudly voice our displeasure.

Your local Member of Parliament is your representative and wants to hear about your concerns. Let your member know that you are unhappy with this policy.

Not sure who to contact? Find your local member’s contact information.

You can sign Veronica’s petition and tweet and re-tweet the link to it.

How about a phonecall to Stephen Conroy you can call the minister’s office on

(03) 9650 1188

Or write to him

Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

You can follow KevinRuddPM on twitter and bombard him with  @replies letting him know personally just how cranky you are. Just make sure that you have the capital letters in the right place and that it is the verified twitter account of Kev or you will be tweeting away at a fake.

You can copy this post or parts of it and publish it on your blog as long as you give me credit.

You could also tweet this post and/or stumble it as well.

If you want other options just click on the NO CLEAN FEED button on my sidebar. Now lets get to it Australia.

The Australian Government, namely Senator Stephen Conroy has given the green light for a ‘Clean Feed’ to be applied to Australian internet.

News posts here, here and here.

In laymens terms, this means that come next August, MANDATORY ISP filtering will occur on all internet.

It’s not up to the Government to say what I can and can’t look at on the internet. I am an adult and so long as my activity isn’t illegal (ch*ld porn) then the Government should have NO RIGHT to filter my internet.

It is up to me to keep my children safe on the net. Not the Government.

See NoCleanFeed for more details and if you agree with me, sign the petition.

SIGN PETITION AGAINST CLEAN FEED.

As a web publisher, this scares me senseless. Officials have admitted that the filtering, while effective against the kind of sites they are wanting to filter (a blacklist, if you will. who knows what exactly they will be deeming ‘not suitable’) there are also plenty of false positives, ie: sites blocked that shouldn’t have been.

Does that mean I could ‘accidentally’ have Frog Ponds Rock blocked? Or what about you. What happens if your website gets blocked?

I don’t agree with it. It is censorship plain and simple.

Sign the petition against it. Please.

Reproduced with permission from Sleepless Nights